The invention relates generally to the field of electronic messaging, and more particularly to systems and methods for handling threads of electronic messages.
Electronic messaging has become commonplace. It is now routinely used to conduct both formal and informal communications. Often these communications occur in a back-and-forth manner where the recipient of a first message may reply to the sender, who then replies to the recipient's reply. This communication generally looks like an electronic conversation. These electronic conversations are popular because of how easily the communication can be disseminated to a large group of people. Often, the original message is sent to several recipients, and the replies are sent to all or many of the original recipients. Perhaps additional recipients are added to the distribution list during the conversation. This type of back-and-forth communication is commonly referred to as a “thread.”
Threads can be lengthy, and numerous people are sometimes included in the distribution list. However, lengthy threads can be annoying for people in the distribution list that are not very interested in the conversation. Many times the initiator of such a thread arbitrarily decides who to include in the distribution list, and recipients who would rather not be on the list are inconvenienced or, even worse, frustrated. Of course, such a recipient could reply directly to the initiator of the message and request not to receive any future messages, but this is imposing on the recipient and sometimes viewed as rude. It is also often ineffective because subsequent replies commonly don't come from the initiator of the thread, so the recipient still continues to get subsequent messages.
Message thread handling has been largely ignored by the electronic messaging industry. Accordingly, an adequate solution to these problems has eluded those skilled in the art, until now.